We fly over Muirvale and head straight across the border into Wyndwood as the long northern dusk begins to fall. It took us the entire afternoon to get here, and I worry that the marauding werebeasts have a significant lead. Fortunately for us—and hopefully the captives—the border forest is rough, hilly, and offers few paths. The difficult terrain will have slowed the kidnappers down, but we can fly right over it and search the thinner woods beyond.
“Fan out.” I direct the order to the entire squadron. “There are only so many accessible paths north from Muirvale. They can’t be far now.”
The team widens their formation to cover more ground. I know they’ll stay within communicating distance, but I can’t help a quick look at Idallia and Fyrestar as they veer off, moving away from me. She watches the ground, searching the increasingly visible werepaths below with such absolute focus that I know a meteor could light the sky and she wouldn’t even notice it hurtling down.
I look away. Knowing she can handle herself doesn’t keep my gut from tightening with worry as I keep my own eyes vigilantly on the ground. Idallia of Glarraden can kill anything when she’s concentrating. The problem is she can just as easily be killed when she’s not, and staying focused is the one thing I can’t seem to drill into her, even after more than one-hundred-and-eighty years.
I don’t worry about the rest of my team going up against weres like I do with enemy vampires, who force us out of the sky with arrows and spears and don’t burn in our firebreath thanks to their despicable king’s dark magic. Werebeasts have shorter lifespans than even humans and no accelerated healing. They come in different forms and can be clawed, fanged, big, and vicious, but my dragon shifters and I are clawed, fanged, bigger, and more vicious. The trick is not swallowing any of their meat or blood as we rip into them.
Ironically, Idallia is better suited to fighting vampires. Heavy, clawed werebeasts with their big fangs and powerful hindquarters for pouncing from afar are the bigger threat to her.
I catch a hint of movement in the trees and angle lower for a better look. The kidnappers could be anyone, or more likely, a mix of werebeasts brought together by this new faction, which is solely about ideology. Wolves, foxes, bears, snow tigers, northern bulls, giant leithrats…They’ve never warred, but they don’t have much in common either—besides their ability to shift. This brought a huge and powerful group together—stealing children.
The growl boiling inside me rumbles louder when I realize the movement I’m tracking is just a deer.
“There!” Wade’s mind-to-mind shout carries across the distance from behind me.
Turning in a tight circle, I dive in the direction Wade is indicating. The others wheel around and start their own downward spirals. Fyrestar keeps pace with me at first, but falls behind as I near the treetops. I get a good look at the group despite the waning light. Werewolves, werebears, and weretigers.
I gather heat and magic in my throat and unleash a firebreath that cuts off the weres leading the pack and forces them to turn toward a small break in the forest. The blaze helps us see better, and Maia and Arran bank left to follow several weres who splinter off from the main group as the treetops go up in flames.
My gaze follows them for mere seconds, my focus on the larger group. I can’t tell how many werebeasts we’re dealing with yet, but we know it’s enough to have made off with fifteen Muirvale werechildren as they woke in the early hours to use outhouses and gather water from wells. A classic snatch and run, just like we’re seeing more and more of these days.
The captain who flew to Drayke Mountain to report wanted authorization to pursue them across the border with his northern unit, but sending soldiers into Wyndwood is a delicate thing. I only have permission from the Were King to recover kidnapping victims if I’m fast, discreet, and don’t go too far into the northern forests. I don’t have permission to send an army of dragon shifters into a sovereign kingdom. Doing that now, especially with tensions running high before the upcoming Council, would be a declaration of war.
With the Elite Wing handling the situation, we can still pass it off as politics instead of aggression, even if the latter is closer to the truth. War has an actual scent in my nostrils these days, like the smoke from an old tallow candle that’s starting to go rancid and leave its black soot and strong stench in the air. The scent mostly comes from the east, fueled by vampire raiders on the hunt for blood, but the north is starting to stink of it too. The Were King had better start solving his problems if he wants to keep ruling his kingdom.
“Head for those clearings. Separate the weres from the children. Then kill the beasts.” I don’t have to remind them to be careful of what they ingest. Cealastra’s gift of protection to weres is a curse to others if they eat their flesh or drink their blood.
Low to the trees, our long shadows chase the kidnappers through southern Wyndwood. I want to herd them toward where the forest thins so that we can stay in scales. The fight will go quicker than if we shift, and we can stop this before going any farther into Wyndwood. The Were King doesn’t like this new faction of extremists any more than we do, but he hasn’t been successful in controlling them so far. I’m tired of doing the work for him when I have bigger problems to the east, and he’d better not fucking come after me with some false claim of hostility during the next Council or I’ll tear off his head and throw it from my mountaintop.
Now that would be hostility.
Below us, small paths open up, and werebeasts suddenly scatter in every direction. My snarl heats my throat. “Get lower! Cut them off!” Their dispersion forces us out of our already loose formation. We were herding them, but now they’re separating us.
I glance to the side. Maia and Arran are already well to the west in pursuit of the group that originally veered off and crashed through the underbrush. On my right wing, Kellan, Wade, and Danica all speed off after different clusters, their wing guards following them. Fyrestar and Idallia angle down and drop below the canopy, small enough to weave through the trees and follow in flight. I lose sight of them quickly and don’t like it.
Part of me still wonders why I thought she’d be better off with the Elite Wing than in the big, mostly empty halls of Glarraden House. There, no one thought twice about where she was—or thought twice about her at all. But she was too quick and ferocious and skilled to overlook, with a burning desire to overcome, and now I can’t seem to look away, which might be the biggest problem I’ve had since Rannigan Bloodthief figured out how to protect his vampire raiders from our firebreath.
I scan the woods below but don’t see a black-haired warrior or a burning streak of feathers. Idallia can fight, and Fyrestar will protect her with his life, so I stay my course and speed up to get in front of the weres I’m tracking, looking for a big enough opening to accommodate my size.
Landing hard in a clearing, I kick up woodland debris and crunch exposed roots under my taloned feet. Branches blow back as if trying to flee, autumn leaves trembling and dropping in fear. The werewolves of this now whittled-down pack pull up short. The five of them are in half skins—bipedal but beasts—and hauling three rope-tied children who haven’t mastered changing forms yet.
I look the little ones over, trying to judge their ages. We all start out in Cealastra’s image, with the five points of her hallowed star being our heads, arms, and legs. Humans, fae, and vampires stay that way. Only dragon shifters and werebeasts develop an alternate form, and that can sometimes take years. It’s longer for a dragon shifter—often a few decades. A were lifetime is fleeting in comparison, and their changes happen faster and usually before adolescence, but these children still have short, common-form legs and only a handful of years.
I strike without warning and crunch down on the lead werewolf’s head, ripping it from his body. I spit him out, blood seeping from between my fangs. Like all werebeasts, his goddess-given defense is to taste like death, and I use my inner fire to burn his werepoison from my mouth. “Give me the children.”
“They’re not yours,” someone dares answer, a guttural voice coming from a half-skin wolf.
“Torridaig weres are mine.” I take a heavy step forward, my claws scraping the ground. The angry rumble in my chest carries fire that I don’t dare let out for fear of burning the children. “Hand them over and I’ll give you a ten-second head start.”
The three werebeasts with kids yank the children in front of them like shields. My lip curls in disgust, cool air hitting my exposed fangs in a way I don’t like after the hot wash of blood followed by the scorch of inner fire in my mouth. Skin it is. I can’t fight in my dragon form without risking the safety of the werechildren who are looking at me with sheer panic and hope in their eyes.
I slam shadow wings forward and sweep the two closest weres off their feet as I transform. The effort to make the darkness solid against the kidnappers but not the children costs me a measure of magic and slows my usually seamless shift into my fully dressed and armed common form, but the unexpected move allows two of the kids to wrench their ropes from their captors’ hands and jump away while I lunge and grab the third child. I shove her toward the other two as I draw my sword. It’s one against four, but it will be almost too easy now that the children are clear.
Two weres leap for me. I fight them off, then whip around and smash my blade through the face of the werewolf who just tried to get behind me, dragging my sword back out with a twist that leaves a hole in his misshapen, half-skin head. He drops, and the three trembling kids stumble backward.
“Go!” I snarl to the children.
